Millions of boomers retired during the pandemic, but some didn’t entirely leave the workforce — they just joined the gig economy.
As many as seven million gig workers are missing from official government employment figures, according to a new paper by researchers from Hebrew University and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Over half of the missing gig workers were aged 60 or older, and over 40% of them described themselves as “retired.” The researchers analyzed the results of the Survey of Informal Work Participation from 2015 to 2022, as well as government employment figures from the Current Population Survey.
While millions of retirement-age Americans appeared to leave the workforce during the pandemic — due to COVID concerns and the wealth gains from rising home and stock values — the paper’s findings suggest that many of them didn’t truly leave for good.
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